


Old Habits, And All That

by ishie



Category: The X-Files, Veronica Mars - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8172122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: A chance encounter on a beach, or: Two crusaders at the shore: Veronica, her path uncertain; Scully, her eyes open.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JaqofSpades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/gifts).



> Takes place in some amorphous space between XF2 and the revival, before the VMars movie, in a land where mutants dwell.
> 
> NB: I could not resist the Tanagra reference. 
> 
> Thanks to L for her patience, and to JaqofSpades for the chance to write these two! Happy Crossovering!

On the website, the hotel looked like the kind of place that was way out of Veronica's price range. In person... Well, it was definitely still out of her price range. Until she finished law school, even the Camelot would be. At least it wasn't intimidatingly so. Especially with the friends and family discount, courtesy of a classmate. 

Sure, the roof sagged a bit overlooking the pool, and the balconies overlooking the parking lot didn't seem capable of supporting Thumbelina, let alone a young woman still working off her 1L ten. Or thirty. At least it probably wasn't the no-tell kind of hotel. Most self-respecting adulterers on this particular stretch of the Atlantic coast already owned their own homes away from home. One each for spouse and spare. 

Ah, the filthy rich. Even putting an entire continent between herself and Neptune wasn't enough to kick Veronica entirely out of their orbits. 

Things started looking up in the lobby. Sturdy chairs and tables faced wide windows overlooking a stretch of grass bordering a worn stone patio with its own flimsier furniture. Salt-bleached wooden steps cut between the massive rocks that marked the boundary of the beach, beyond which Veronica could just make out the curled heads of shallow waves at the shore. 

Two large paintings flanked the fireplace. They looked like Jamie Wyeths, an artist Veronica only knew because two of his prints hung opposite the circulation desk during her brief career as a student librarian. But these were originals, it looked like, each individual whorl of paint casting a tiny shadow. Sheep and grassy hills and rocky outcrops glowed like gold under an oil sun. 

Everything was coming up "nice quiet weekend of rest and relaxation." Finally.

The woman at the reception desk, wearing a plastic nametag that proclaimed her: Mariana (OWNER), checked her in quickly with a minimum of fuss. Veronica awarded her all the points for her discretion, given the ludicrously reduced rate she was paying. 

Once she'd passed over room keys and taken the in-case-of-emergency info, Mariana dispensed the wifi password and a map to the nearest Michelin-starred restaurants—Veronica barely stifled a snort—before pulling out an ornate basket of figs, cheeses, local honey, and a bottle of champagne larger than Veronica's head. 

"For what you did for Katie," the woman said. "She'd be back here with us already if you hadn't-" 

Wasn't that always the way? A tiny favor here or there, and suddenly people were blowing it all out of proportion. 

Veronica set her jaw. "Katie won the appeal on her own merits. She's a strong researcher, and twice the student I've ever been. She deserved to keep her place in our class." 

"Even so," the woman told her, tapping the side of her nose. 

It wasn't worth arguing, but Veronica wanted to do it all the same. Chalk it up to practice. God knew she needed it. But a heated exchange with this woman wasn't going to change her mind, about Veronica or whatever she thought Katie couldn't handle on her own. 

"Thanks," Veronica said instead, and wheeled her bag toward the stairs, the basket an unwelcome weight on her hip.

Her room was in the newer part of the hotel, where apparently they had paid a contractor a bonus for every time the stairs turned without enough room to keep a wheeled suitcase from banging into a wall and tipping over. A contractor who had clearly walked away with a fat check.

Veronica wrestled her things through the door, where she found another embarrassing basket of goodies waiting for her.

"Jeez, you'd think I took the bar for her." The flowers smelled nice, though, and the chocolates were a welcome sight. Artisanal cheeses weren't really her thing. 

A sliding door opened out onto a fairly spacious balcony—much larger than those in front. It was separated from the next room's balcony by a painted wood divider festooned with spiky plants and, presumably, anything else that enjoyed a constant dose of sea spray.

The light mist carried on the wind dotted her skin. Her hair whipped in the wind, well on its way to becoming an utter snarl. She tasted the salt when she licked her lips.

It was almost perfect. 

The wide sweep of beach stretched from a tall bluff to Veronica's left to the setting sun at her right. She knocked her sunglasses back down and squinted at it for a minute. It made her dizzy, trying to orient herself to a beach so out of place. The sun should have been setting directly ahead, like it did at home, or somewhere behind, like it did on the rest of the east coast. It took her a minute to remember that the shoreline here faced to the south, putting nothing ahead of her but distant islands. 

She squinted some more.

_Probably?_

On the next balcony, the sliding door opened. Loud voices spilled out, not an argument yet but headed that way quickly.

Veronica slipped back into her room, and switched on the TV. The dulcet tones of the generic hotel info channel and the crash of the surf outside managed to drown out most of the commotion from next door. She grabbed a paperback from her bag—all law school materials strictly forbidden this weekend—then crawled onto the bed, propped herself up against the mound of thick white pillows, and bit into the first of the chocolates.

Maybe perfect wasn't so far off.

* * *

"-see if I care!"

Veronica jerked awake, face pressed to a mysteriously damp pillowcase and paperback hopelessly wrinkled under her torso. A door slammed in the hallway, and footsteps pounded down the stairs. Footsteps and a wheeled suitcase, which banged into the wall all the way down. 

"Godspeed," she muttered, dragging another pillow over her ear. 

The evening was dark and cool when she emerged again, feeling overheated and sticky from her unexpected nap. The sky was clear from horizon to horizon, and a stiff breeze chased goosebumps up her arms until she ducked inside for a sweatshirt. Late summer was edging into fall, and just like at home, the beach didn't hold onto the warmth of the day for long. 

When the chill finally chased her inside, she picked up her phone to call her dad and got his voicemail.

"Hey, Dad. I finally made it. Sorry I couldn't pick up earlier. Traffic out of Boston was a nightmare. But I'm here! It's gorgeous, and it doesn't look like they're going to kick me out for being in the wrong tax bracket! I'll try you again tomorrow."

She held her heavy sigh until after the call was disconnected. They'd been playing phone tag for weeks, it seemed. The whole summer, while she interned at Whedon & Chen and he took on a new client he wouldn't even talk about, it was like they were on opposite planets, not just opposite coasts. When she had a few minutes before work, he was still asleep. When she was winding down at the end of an exhausting day, he was out on a job, or out of town, or just plain out. 

(She'd stopped asking with whom. It was past time to give the man some space. That was maturity, right?)

It was particularly galling now, not being able to talk to him directly. Some things you could say on a voicemail, or over text, or even in an email. But, "hey, Dad, I know we've sacrificed a hell of a lot to get me here, but I don't think I want it anymore?"

Yeah. That was a face-to-face convo if ever there was one. Or face-to-Skype, if she could get him on the phone long enough to walk him through setting it up.

Veronica stepped into her shoes and grabbed her wallet and keys. There was supposedly a restaurant somewhere on the premises. With any luck, they'd still be serving real food. Woman could only live on chocolate so long.

The stairs were much easier to navigate without a suitcase. Halfway down, there was a small dent and a smear of red on the drywall. She leaned down for a closer look. It looked like plastic transfer, probably from a wheel or bumper on the suitcase of the stomper she'd heard earlier. Still, she snapped a few quick photos with her phone. Old habits, and all that.

The restaurant was a short walk down a beachfront path and over a small dune. From her vantage point near the gate that led into the pool area, Veronica could see an older white woman with red hair at a table by the windows, paging through a battered paperback and slowly eating a club sandwich. At a corner booth, a bald black man hunched over what looked like a ruggedized laptop, surrounded by newspapers and file folders. 

She was hungry enough to be distracted by it, but instead of heading toward the restaurant, Veronica went over the line of rocks that marked the edge of the private beach. Sand poured into her tennis shoes and a gust of wind caught the hood of her sweatshirt, pulling the fabric tight against her throat.

The tide was still going out. Foam churned in the surf and blew across the wet sand. As long as she didn't look for the moon, it was almost like being on the beach in Neptune. 

Veronica walked down to the water line and through the surf, kicking free of seaweed occasionally, burrowed down into her sweatshirt against the wind. Her cheeks burned from the stinging salt spray. Her hair was already tangled and stiff. All that was missing was a stubborn bulldog pulling on his leash.

A huge gust of wind slammed into her, sending her reeling back a few steps before she caught her balance. Her hair whipped around her face, into her eyes. She scraped it free and tried to stuff it in the hood, but the wind caught the fabric again before she could pull the strings tight. 

Spinning to put her back to the water and wind, Veronica pushed the hair out of her eyes again. But before she managed to get her hair stuffed into the hood, she forgot what she was trying to do.

Because there was a dead man staring back at her from the sand.

* * *

Cops the world over were pretty much the same. Well, Veronica assumed they were. She'd met a fair few, from the local deputies all the way to the FBI and Interpol. Some were good guys. A lot more weren't. Tons were just trying to bring home a paycheck. Law enforcement wasn't a perfect system, no matter where you went, and in fact sometimes it was a downright criminal one itself. But at least she always knew how to talk to a cop.

Or, she thought she did.

Officer Duncan clicked his pen and huffed out a breath. "All right. Let's go over this one more time. You came out for a walk, after dark-"

The way this one kept emphasizing that, as if it were completely ridiculous for someone to take a stroll on a beach, at night, in a beach town, in the summer. Veronica wanted to tear into him. She settled for pasting on her "listen sweetly to the senior partner" smile.

"Yes, that's correct," she said. Chirped, really. "A walk all by my lonesome."

"You weren't meeting anyone?"

"I just got here for the first time in my life about two hours ago. Who would I be meeting?"

She smiled again, trying to make her expression blank otherwise. _Think pink,_ she told herself. _Pretty pink like a prison jumpsuit isn't._

Duncan still didn't look like he was buying it, which sucked, because for once Veronica was telling the whole truth and nothing but. 

She might not have the best history with cops in general—dads of the year _and_ occasional makeout buddies notwithstanding—but she had turned over a new leaf since then. Several new leaves, in fact. 

Veronica dropped the smile. "Look, Officer Duncan, I was heading over to get something to eat at the restaurant. I wish I could tell you there was a suspicious noise or movement or something, but the truth is I needed some alone time. The drive here was awful. I had an incredibly long and tedious summer. The thought of talking to one more person, even a server taking my dinner order, made me want to peel my skin off. So I came out here to look at the ocean and feel sorry for myself until I could be a normal person again. I wasn't coming to meet anyone, let alone a dead guy. Or anybody who would leave a dead guy. Okay?"

"Okay." He closed his notebook and slid it into a pocket, along with the pen. 

" _What_?"

"Yeah." Duncan pointed a thumb over his shoulder toward the hotel. "Mariana called it in before you did. Danny, her kid, he does a sweep after dark to bring in anything the guests left behind. Found this guy, unfortunately. He's not gonna sleep great for a while."

After a beat, he added, "Danny, I mean."

"I didn't think you meant the dead guy."

Duncan nodded. "Just wanted to be clear. I'm sure Mariana will move your room if you don't want to look out over this the rest of the weekend. She's been talking about you coming out to visit us for weeks now. Thinks the world of what you did for Katie."

Why did everyone in this town think she'd performed some kind of miracle?

"It wasn't a big deal, honestly."

"Eh, I don't know. Sounded like a pretty big deal. She was half-packed to come home when you stepped in, from what I hear."

Well, at least that much was true. "I didn't _do_ anything. Katie earned that reinstatement on her own. I was just there for moral support."

And to push Katie to go to the dean in the first place. And to dig up the emails the professor swore up and down he couldn't possibly have seen. The emails where Katie made it plain that she was going to put up with the professor's harassment, that had mysteriously disappeared from her account.

And to remind the dean of what she knew about his own complicity in the professor's continued behavior.

Duncan smiled, like he wasn't used to moving his face that way. "Moral support, huh? I'll tell you what, Katie's a good girl. Not everyone sees that, especially around here. I've known her since before her mama popped her out. Used to let her hang around down at the station when she couldn't take it here anymore. She stopped me from getting a confession out of Henry Brody when she was about ten, she ever tell you about that?"

Veronica could just picture it: a tinier version of Katie, mouth set in a ferocious frown, lecturing a man at least three times her size about proper procedure.

"I didn't properly Mirandize the guy. Ten years old, telling me I had to do it right or I couldn't do it at all. She's a real terrier when someone gets her back up. Not on her own account, though. Wouldn't say boo to a bear unless it was threatening somebody else."

What could Veronica say to that? This Duncan had her read pretty good.

"It wasn't anything she wouldn't have done for me."

Duncan propped his hands on his hips and squinted down at her. "Listen, I can't let you go until somebody comes to collect, er, the body, and who knows when that will be. Why don't you go sit down over there, out of the wind."

He pointed to the patio Veronica had seen from inside the lobby. To her surprise, the redheaded woman she'd seen in the restaurant earlier was sitting there already.

"Sure," she said. "Thanks. Let me know if you have any more questions. Like I said, I don't know who the guy is, but it's possible I saw something earlier that might help. Oh, and there was a couple arguing in the room next to mine. Could be related."

"Could be," Duncan said, but he sounded skeptical. "Well, if you did see something, I'm sure we'll turn it up." He tapped the brim of his hat and turned away.

* * *

The rock wall and the dunes cut most of the wind but it was still chilly on the patio. Veronica smiled at the woman, who smiled briefly in return then turned back to her careful study of the beach.

Shrugging, Veronica sat with her eyes closed for a few minutes, trying not to think about the dinner she definitely wasn't going to get now. On her way back up the beach she'd caught a glimpse of the last light turning off inside the restaurant. It looked like she was down to figs and chocolates until morning.

"Mariana said she'd be out with a patio warmer as soon as she finds ... something it needs," the woman said, after a while. "I'm Dana, by the way. You're Veronica?"

Veronica sat up straight. "Hi. Let me guess: Mariana gave you my life story."

"Only bits and pieces. I'm not sure what shoe size you wear, but she might have just forgotten to mention."

"Six, but I'll squeeze into a five and a half if it's real pretty."

Dana laughed, a surprising burst of sound in the darkness. Veronica found herself joining in, letting the moment carry away some of the tension of the night.

Wiping her eyes, Dana said, "Sorry. That reminded me so much of something my sister used to say."

Veronica confessed. "I got it from my best friend. She used to borrow her mom's shoes and slather her feet in Vasoline to squeeze into them."

It ruined the shoes, of course. A bonus in Lilly's eyes.

Dana gave her a small smile, then turned her attention back to the beach again. 

"You found the body?" she said.

Veronica nodded, her throat suddenly tight. It was far from the first dead body she'd seen. Wasn't even the first she'd found, but that never made it any easier. Even it being a complete stranger didn't make it easier. Nothing would. She'd still cried like a baby seeing Cassidy Casablanca, after everything he did.

Realizing Dana couldn't see her, she said, "Yes," in a croaky tone. She cleared her throat. "Yes, I found him. He was about ten feet above the water, feet pointed toward the ocean."

"He didn't wash up, then."

No, he hadn't. Bodies that washed up were far less tidy, and almost never perpendicular to the shore. Plus, they were approaching low tide. For his body to be that far up on the sand, he would have to have been there for hours. Somebody would have found him well before Veronica did. There had still been people on the beach and in the water when she looked out from her balcony at sunset.

"His clothes were dry, too. I checked for a pulse, and his skin was cold."

"Eyes open or closed?"

"Open. But still clear. No clouding." 

Dana pulled out a phone and texted someone. "I'm sorry. No more questions. I'm a medical doctor with some forensics experience. Sometimes my training gets the better of me. I'm sure the local police have everything under control."

Veronica wasn't so sure. She looked down the beach to where Duncan had stretched out in the sand, his hat over his face. The hotel sheet covering the body flapped in the wind.

"I thought maybe you'd like some company, but I can go if you need some time to process," Dana said. 

"No, please, stay. It's nice to have someone to talk to."

Dana nodded and sat back, but neither of them spoke. Veronica laughed, and shook her head.

"Sorry. You're a doctor?"

"Yes, a pediatric surgeon. But I used to teach forensic science. A lifetime ago."

Veronica nodded. The woman was probably her dad's age, hardly old enough to look back on a career as if it were someone else's. Then again, look at how far afield his own had taken him. Okay, bad example. He was still the sheriff in spirit, even if he'd never hold the office again.

"But not around here?"

"No, down in Virginia. We're just here for a vacation." She paused, seeming to consider her words. "I'm here for a vacation. My partner has other plans."

"Workaholic?"

"In a sense." She smiled, looking like this might be an old private joke. "He's on his way back now. Definitely going to be sorry he missed this excitement. But at least he loves what he does."

Veronica got the sense that asking what exactly it was that he did wouldn't get very far. 

"How about you?" Dana asked. "Do you love what you do?"

An immediate, forceful _nope_ was the first thing to spring to mind.

"Sometimes," she told Dana. "I'm starting my final year of law school. I love that part. This summer I was an associate at a big firm in Boston. Did not love that."

"I think it's hard to love anything about an internship."

"The free lunches were nice. Kissing all that ass, not so much. And the hours..."

Dana studied her for a moment. "It's not an easy career in the beginning. But in some directions it gets less onerous the longer you're at it."

The real trouble was, Veronica couldn't figure out how long she wanted to be at it. All these years she'd had this vision of passing the bar and going to work for some high-powered firm. But doing what? She couldn't envision herself working as a criminal lawyer, defending people who were in most cases as guilty as they were accused of being. Not at the level her ambition would demand, anyway. 

But she couldn't go down the same road as the Cliffs of the world, either. Sticking up for the little guys had a lot of appeal, she had to admit, but it wasn't all that attractive of a path either. Her dad's ambition for her demanded better, and she hated so much to let him down.

"I didn't want to be a doctor," Dana confessed. "That was my dad's dream for me. But it was a good career, and I was good at it and interested enough to go along. So, I went to medical school."

"That's kind of how it is for me, too. Did you ever regret it?"

"Oh, God, yeah." She laughed. "All the time! I still do. It's hard work. It can be damaging work, especially when all your knowledge and practice and skill aren't enough. But it's not everything. That was probably the hardest thing for me to understand. It took a long time to understand it, after a lot of wrong turns. A lot of right ones, too, though."

Dana pulled out her phone and smiled at whatever reply she'd gotten. After turning off the screen, she kept running her thumb along the face, as if she couldn't bear to let it go completely.

"You've got a year left?"

Veronica nodded.

"Well, if you don't mind some advice from a nosy stranger, give it the year. You've come this far; you can see it through. And if some new path opens along the way, maybe you take that one instead. Or maybe you recognize that it's the wrong one for you."

Below them, on the beach, Duncan got to his feet and waved his hat at someone approaching from the east. 

"Logan, over here!" he shouted. "What the hell's Xavier doing sending you?"

Dana stood and stretched. "I'm going to head inside. My partner will be here soon. Are you okay out here alone?"

Veronica waved airily. "Oh, sure, they'll be done soon, I think. Thanks for sitting with me."

She startled when the woman reached for her hand and squeezed. She squeezed back, though.

"Why don't you meet us for breakfast tomorrow? My partner worked in law enforcement for a while, too. You can practice your questioning on us both, maybe pump him for career advice, too. You should take it all with a very large grain of salt, though. He loves an audience."

"Will do," Veronica said with a grin. "That would be great. Thanks again."


End file.
